In the Center of Yankee Change

TAMPA, Fla.—Curtis Granderson had an inkling that something was coming.

He had heard the rumblings that his team wanted to move him out of one of the most prestigious positions in sports: center field for the New York Yankees, onetime home of Joe DiMaggio and Mickey Mantle. The team planned to shift him over to left field in favor of the younger, fleeter Brett Gardner.

A week into spring training, he needed to find out for himself. So he went to his manager, Joe Girardi, Wednesday afternoon, and asked him flat out: Would he be moving?

"I just wanted to know what was going on, just to see, because I obviously heard everything from you guys," Granderson said to the Yankee beat writers Thursday. "The story either was created or there had to be some information somewhere…Sure enough, it was discussed. He said a decision was going to be made soon."

The wheels were soon in motion.

Thursday morning, Girardi went to Granderson again, and then to Gardner, privately, and told each man that the team planned to try Gardner in center, and Granderson in left. The two outfielders then tested out their new positions in fielding drills later that day.

The Yankees are couching it as an experiment and say nothing is final, but unless something goes drastically wrong over the next month, this is how the Yankees will deploy their outfielders in 2013.

"We're gonna toy with it, see if we like it," Girardi said. "If we do, we'll stay with it."

There's every reason for them to like the arrangement. Gardner, 29 years old, is a superlative defensive outfielder who has been, to some degree, wasted in left field since the arrival of Granderson in 2010.

Granderson, who will be 32 by opening day, has been a fast straight-line runner who uses his speed to chase down balls, but who sometimes makes imperfect reads off the bat.

In the past few years, his defense has declined, according to Scott Spratt of Baseball Info Solutions, a leader in the emerging field of defensive metrics and publisher of the Fielding Bible.

"The major culprit of the change for Granderson is a decline on his performance on deep balls," Spratt said. "Yankee Stadium, specifically, has a fairly big left field, especially as compared to its right field, but the switch will still help hide Granderson's specific deficiencies a bit. That improvement will be more obvious when the Yankees travel to specific parks, such as Fenway."

Gardner's limited forays into center field over the past five years have also yielded excellent results. Just swapping the two will create more opportunities for Gardner and fewer for Granderson, which Spratt said is the proper allocation of resources.

"In essence, the switch could shift as many as 250 potential plays from Granderson to Gardner, which alone justifies the move," Spratt said.

Granderson is generally aware that the statistics don't paint a pretty picture of his defense, and that he isn't quite sure what he used to be. But he feels he's still doing a "decent job" out there.

"I actually felt like I was playing pretty well," Granderson said. "We talked about all these different new stats that come out, which I don't know 100%, but in terms of the evaluation of different things, I felt like balls I should have gotten to, I did and did a decent job of keeping our team in the ball game."

Gardner and Granderson are friends, and Gardner says all the right things about the move. In fact, when the pair and fellow outfielder Ichiro Suzuki saw reporters studying their positioning today, they conspired to switch things up and play Ichiro in center and Gardner in right, "so you guys would really figure something weird was going on," Gardner said with a laugh.

But it's clear Gardner views himself as a natural center fielder, one who will never be as fluid in left field, despite his success at the position.

"I feel comfortable out there," Gardner said. "I feel more comfortable than I would going out to left field, probably always will—even if I played left field for 6 or 8 more years."

If the switch does become permanent, it comes at a bad time for Granderson. The outfielder is in the final year of his contract, and heading into free agency as a left fielder rather than a center fielder could hurt his value—especially if he struggles to learn the new position.

Granderson makes no secret of the fact that he'd rather be in center. But he has always been a good soldier, and this is no different. As long as he's somewhere on the field, he says, that's good enough for him.

"I'd love to play center," Granderson said. "That's what I've been playing. But at the same time, I just want to play, in general. No matter where it happens to be, that's where I want to be at."

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